1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to an improved data processing system, and in particular to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for performing a sorted search in a distributed directory environment using a proxy server.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's computing environment, complex network data processing systems often are needed to facilitate work in large corporations. These complex networks may even span across regions in various worldwide locations, as well as use the Internet as part of a virtual private network for conducting business. In many instances, a federated data model is employed to allow enterprise components to share and access information and resources throughout the network. With the federated data model, wherein multiple data sources appear as one to users, data resides and is controlled locally, and client users in the system, regardless of location, needing the information may access the data using a directory service.
A directory is a special type of database for managing information about people, organizations, data processing systems, and other information sources. Information within a directory is organized within a hierarchical namespace. Each entry in the directory is a named object and consists of a set of attributes. Each attribute has a defined attribute type and one or more values. Each entry is identified by an unambiguous distinguished name (DN), wherein a distinguished name is a concatenation of selected attributes from an entry. A directory service provides a mechanism for searching a directory and for retrieving information from a directory.
Directory services serve as central repository for searching, adding, deleting and modifying data. Example methods of accessing directory services in a computer network include X.500 and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a software protocol for enabling a user to locate organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network, whether on the Internet or on a corporate Intranet. LDAP is a “lightweight” version of Directory Access Protocol (DAP), which is part of X.500, a standard for directory services in a network.
A directory may be distributed among many servers. In a distributed directory environment, data is partitioned across multiple directory servers, also known as backend servers. Distributed directory environments may include one or more backend servers and a proxy server that acts as an intermediate agent between a client and the distributed directory environment. Clients bind to the proxy server instead of directly binding to the backend servers.